Wednesday, January 29, 2014

DIDN'T FEEL LONELY TILL I THOUGHT OF YOU






Woke up this morning, I went out on the street;
Sniffed a few flowers then I went back to sleep.
My head was cloudy but
the sky was blue;
And I didn't feel lonely till I thought of you.






Maybe I'm crazy and I'm lost in a dream;
Brothers and sisters you know what I mean.
You
leave things open and get lost in the space;
And
you have to keep running to keep out of this race.





Note:  Odd, regrettable that I’m unable to post Kevin Ayers' recording of “Didn’t Feel Lonely Till I Thought Of You,” of which these are the first and the final verses, here, but Warner-Chappell Publishing has blocked their inclusion on YouTube.   I would like to think that anyone unfamiliar with the song and the album it appears on, "The Confessions Of Dr. Dream and Other Stories," will be prompted to purchase it.  I promise you won’t be disappointed.  The recordings, which date from the period of Kevin’s commercial zenith, are all splendid and "Didn’t Feel Lonely," in particular, marked the beginning of Kevin’s long musical collaboration with the great guitarist Ollie Halsall, whose solo here is legendary.   


The photos show several contemporary Japanese scenes:  the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo (top), The 21st Century Kanazawa Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa Prefecture (center), and the shrine atop the Dover Street Market Ginza, also in Tokyo (bottom).  Kevin was popular and greatly loved in Japan.  


It’s been almost a year since Kevin’s passing.  I can hardly believe he’s gone and I remember his music and lyrics all the time.  This morning, in absolute zero mid-winter slip-sliding weather, following almost continuous long-term worry and sleeplessness, I’ve been thinking of this one:  “Sometimes I’m burning with a vision so bright/that it brings on the sunshine in the middle of the night” from “Everybody’s Sometime and Some People’s All The Time Blues,” featuring in both the studio and live versions below a brilliant guitar solo from Kevin’s early discovery, the great  Mike Oldfield.   


__ __ __ __


Kevin Ayers: Everyone's Sometime and Some People's All The Time Blues (Link)

Kevin Ayers and the Soporifics: Everyone's Sometime and Some People's All The Time Blues (Live Link)


No comments:

Post a Comment